Belgium's seaside resorts are threatening to sue a top weather site they say is dissuading tourists with coastal forecasts of a gloomy summer, the Belgian press reported Friday.

The resorts slammed MeteoBelgique.be, one of Belgium's most consulted weather pages, for posting a general weather overview for the three summer months, when most sites only offer a ten-day forecast

A French court ruled Friday in favor of employees of food industry group Danone who sued their employer for imposing an English-language computer program.

The court in Vienne in south-eastern France agreed that a 1994 law outlining the "obligatory use of the French language" had to be upheld in the factory.

Shorter people now have a chance to rise to the highest positions in the Philippines armed forces after the country's top military academy lowered its height requirement on Friday.

The head of the Philippine Military Academy, Major General Nonato Peralta said the elite institution would now admit male and female students who were at least five feet (1.52 meters) tall.

Georgia's powerful Orthodox Church has assured believers that the ex-Soviet state's new electronic identity cards do not carry the mark of Satan after being petitioned by worried worshippers.

"The Holy Synod states that from the point of view of theological and ecclesiastical teachings, ID cards as they exist today do not represent the mark of the Antichrist," the Church's governing body said in a statement late Thursday.

A computer glitch was blamed Thursday for an explosive July 4 firework display in California, in which an entire show's pyrotechnics went off simultaneously and burned out in less than 30 seconds.

Independence Day revelers were left disappointed after the all-too-brief Wednesday night display, which was designed to last 15 minutes with fireworks launched from five different locations in San Diego Bay.

Police narrowly escaped an undressing after stumbling into a rowdy hens' night in northern Australia where they were mistaken for strippers by the bride-to-be and her friends.

The male officers attended Darwin's Humpty Doo Tavern after reports of a disturbance and were greeted by an enthusiastic group of women who shouted that the strippers had arrived and tried to pull their shirts off.

Drivers are up in arms after Russian police declared war on the dark tinted glass ubiquitous in cars from humble Ladas to limousines, while stars complain they can no longer hide away from their fans.

Under a new law that came into force July 1, police have the powers to remove the number plates of cars that have dark tinting unless the driver scrapes off the protective film on the spot.

A Philippine local official has been sacked after bunking off work for a school reunion on a tropical island and posting photos of the trip on Facebook, the government said Thursday.

Provincial information officer Maynardo Valdez shut his office for four days in July last year to join former classmates on the holiday island of Boracay, said his employers, the Philippine Information Agency.

Butterflies floating from a dress onto a video screen: Frank Sorbier reached for the high-tech future of haute couture in Paris Wednesday with a visually-gorgeous retelling of a dark fairytale.

Sorbier took as his cue the 17th-century French fairytale "Donkeyskin", about a widowed king set on marrying his own daughter, who escapes his clutches only by demanding a series of impossible gowns, the color of the sky, moon or sun.

World champion hot dog eater Sonya Thomas crushed her previous record Wednesday in the annual showdown, wolfing down 45 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes, to the cheers of an entranced crowd.

The 44-year-old "Black Widow," weighing in at 100 pounds (45 kg), said she achieved her goal of eating her age in dogs. The Korean-American, one of 14 competitors beat her record from last year by five.